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"Oh no, Alice. That's not it. Why, if I didn't want you, would I have you there for the summer?"

"This is different. It's longer, and Grandpa will be the first to warn you that you'll be responsible for me, my legal guardian or something. Maybe Tyler wouldn't want that. I wouldn't blame him. Who wants to be responsible for me?"

"Tyler? Tyler loves you. He's constantly inquiring after you. No, of course not. I just .. ."

"What?"

"I just don't know how Mom and Dad would take that, Alice. Right now, especially after all that happened, they might think you don't love them anymore or they've somehow failed you."

"It's just the other way around. I've failed them and will continue to fail them as long as I'm here. It's not their fault. It's not anyone's fault. It just is."

She nodded but still looked very troubled. We continued walking.

"Maybe you should just do as you've done, come for the summer and see how it goes. You might not want to stay much longer than that and--"

"I don't mean this as a threat, Aunt Zipporah, so please don't take it that way," I said interrupting, "but if I don't move away for my last high school year, I'll run away. Just like my mother," I added, and her eyes widened.

She shook her head. "Your mother never ran away, Alice. That's all a ruse."

"She came here to hide. That was the same thing, and both of you used to run away up in the attic."

"That was only two silly girls pretending."

"No. For my mother it wasn't pretending, just as it's not for me. I'm determined about this, Aunt Zipporah. You don't know, can't know, how I feel and how it will be for me returning to that school. I hate the idea of merely going into the village and facing people, especially with all that's been said about me and still being said about me."

She nodded. "I wouldn't tell your grandmother all that exactly as you're stating it, Alice. If she knew exactly how you feel about this town, the people, she'd go after Mrs. Harrison with a meat cleaver."

"She knows. I don't have to spell it out for her, Aunt Zipporah. All that hangs in the air in this house. You don't live here and experience it as I do. It's so thick that you can feel it. It's not the Doral House anymore. It's the Gloom and Doom House."

We walked in silence again while she thought. "Okay," she said finally. "But let me be the one who brings it up first. In fact," she added, "let me pretend it was my idea from the start and I just told you out here while we were walking."

"No," I said a little too sharply. She stopped and winced.

"What? Why not?"

"I'm sorry, Aunt Zipporah, but I don't want to contribute to any lies or deception anymore in my life, no matter how small they seem to be. They're like cancer cells that eventually grow bigger and poison your body."

She smiled and raised her eyebrows.

"Maybe you're right," she said. "But there is such a thing as a little white lie, Alice, an attempt to keep someone you love or care about from suffering or feeling badly."

"In the end we're all better off with cold, hard truth. Maybe that would have been better for my mother."

"Your mother's situation was too complicated for any easy answers," she said. She paused and looked back at the house. "When do you want to talk about this with Grandpa and Grandma, Alice?"

"Before I do, are you absolutely sure it would be all right with you and Tyler?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Then right now," I said. "There's no point in putting it off until the last possible moment and springing it on them."

"How did you get so wise?"

"I'm not very wise," I said.

"You're wiser than I was at your age."

I looked back at the house. How could I tell her, explain that whatever insight I had came to me mysteriously up in the attic? She would surely think I was weirder than she could imagine, I thought. And then I thought maybe she won't. Maybe she once believed in the magic of the Doral House attic, too. I decided for now, however, to keep that secret to myself. I didn't want her to have any reason to fear my coming to live with her and Tyler.